Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Now that the Lightbringer has Ascended...

...and we're all ready to start taxing our way to prosperity in a few months (If you plan on realizing any capital gains, better do it before the next Congress gets seated!) let's look around the country to see what great strides in freedom and assorted other boneheadery happened at the ballot box...

Voters in Massachusetts voted to decriminalize possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. They may have actually been partaking of the herb in line at the polls, because they also voted against a proposition to first halve, and then eliminate the state's confiscatory income tax.

Voters in Colorado agreed that babies are cute, but blastocysts are invisible, and besides, it's hard to extend Constitutional rights to free speech to something that doesn't even have mouthparts yet. Me? I still think life begins at 40, so you kids stay offa my lawn. I mean it.

Floridians and Arizonans are still worried about who their neighbors might marry.

A state lottery was approved in Arkansas, using the usual selling point that all the funds will be used for education. I'm generally in favor of a voluntary tax, especially one that weighs heavily on optimists and idiots, but if they ever actually do use the money from these things on schools, it must be to buy more dodge balls and not things like, oh, Probability & Statistics textbooks.

Finally, the denizens of the Upper Left Coast voted to allow people to check out with dignity, provided that they are officially diagnosed with less than six months to live. The rest of us will still be stuck knotting half-hitches into bed sheets.

"A state lottery was approved in Arkansas, using the usual selling point that all the funds will be used for education. I'm generally in favor of a voluntary tax, especially one that weighs heavily on optimists and idiots, but if they ever actually do use the money from these things on schools, it must be to buy more dodge balls and not things like, oh, Probability & Statistics textbooks."

Oh, I think we've got an open handed slap in the face for the definition of irony, here.

I was and still am SO confused by Massachusetts. I will only live in income-tax-free states (I'm in Washington at the moment). I saw people on Twitter last night saying "yay" that they kept their income tax, at which point I turned off notifications from the service and looked at apartments in Auburn, Alabama (near the Mises Institute) on the very tiny chance that there might be an intelligent person to have lunch with there.

A more subtle point, but Washington's current governor, Christine Gregoire, has publicly stated many times that she plans to reinstate an income tax to help fund schools. Dino Rossi, who was running against her, was against an income tax. (Gregoire's attack ads claimed Rossi wanted to lower the minimum wage, which made me like him more!) Guess who won. Sigh.

I've lived her in the People's Republic of MA. for 11 years now and it STILL bothers me how stupid the people can be here. " We can't afford it." was repeated so many times here that it's sickening to listen to. Some lady in the paper said that " We're in enough trouble now, we don't need this to happen." Well no shit Sherlock... now you've given them Carte Blanche to raise up the taxes even more since they know you don't care about lowering them. I'd like to leave but even NH is blue now...

OTOH, in Missouri, Amendment #1 to the state constitution passed making English the official language of the state. Henceforth, all official documents at the state and local levels must be in English only. In addition, the 'pubs increased their seats in both state houses. The area even gained a seat in the US House.

Good luck to Arkansas. Here in California we also approved a State Lottery years ago on the promise of revenue for schools. Our schools got the money alright, it's just that the State reduced the school's general fund budget by the amount of the Lottery revenue. So our schools are getting he same amount of money, it's just coming from lottery revenue instead of taxes taken in by the State. Awesome.

I was shocked by California's passing of a gay marriage ban as well. The only analysis I've seen that makes any sense is that the large black turnout for Obama helped pass the ban, as the black community in general seems to be anti-gay.